In the "Thunder Child" thread, we eventually got a discussion going about the possibilities of a second Martian invasion, probably taking place around the time of World War I. Assuming (overoptimistically) that the Martians are able to fortify themselves against Earth's germs, that still leaves them with the element of surprise shot, and up against an enemy that now has poison gases of their own (chlorine, phosgene, and mustard), gas masks and protective clothing, Fighting-Machines of their own (tanks and armored cars), several flavors of flying machine (airplanes and zeppelins), long-range and quick-firing artillery pieces, recoilless guns, submarines, and all-big gun (Dreadnought-type) battleships.

The biggest handicap the Martians will face is that it takes many hours to break out of their cylinders, during which time humans can blast them with explosives of some sort. They could also position a cannon or machine gun right in front of the screw, to fire directly into the cylinder as soon as the screw falls out and slaughter the occupants. About the only thing the Martians could do is land in the most out-of-the-way places they can find, hoping that the human defenders won't have time to reach and attack the cylinders before they are opened. But under the new conditions, the humans have bombing aircraft to quickly attack the invaders wherever they land, and until the cylinders are opened, their occupants can't even shoot back. Landing on small, distant islands also leaves them vulnerable to fire from naval artillery.

The Black Smoke poison gas the Martians use is a simple asphyxiating agent, so ordinary gas masks are sufficient protection against it. This takes away the Martians' biggest advantage, as the Black Smoke was more decisive than the Heat-Ray in their campaign of conquest. Against hidden and entrenched artillery, the Martians now have no choice but to advance into the humans' line of fire and take their licks until they can bring their Heat-Rays to bear.

We know absolutely nothing about the flying machine the Martians have, including its speed, range, and whether or not it is armed. If the Martians don't expect aerial opposition, they might content themselves with a relatively slow device that Earth's biplane fighters could successfully engage. (Remember, Mars is running low on resources, so they'd probably scrimp on their war preparations whenever they think they can safely get away with it.) Antiaircraft guns will also be a factor now, when the flying machine attacks cities and ground forces.

Some say that the Martians learned their lesson about engaging warships with the "Thunder Child" incident, and thus would now automatically fire on all warships at long range. But maybe they DIDN'T learn their lesson. The third Fighting-Machine had disappeared by the time the smoke cleared, so we don't know whether it walked away or got caught in the blast radius of the Thunder Child. Add to that the fact that the flying machine only turned up AFTER the battle, and we can see that the Martians might not have had any witnesses to tell them what happened.

It may not matter, anyway. The Thunder Child steamed in close before firing to presumably make every shot count, but with battleship-sized guns, she could also have fired on the Martians from miles away. And here's another thing to remember: predreadnought battleships had only two to four battleship-sized guns, while carrying large numbers of smaller guns of various calibres. Capital ships of the Dreadnought era carried anywhere from eight to ten or even twelve guns of the largest type, relying almost entirely upon them during combat. That means that they would be far better suited to a long-range duel with the Fighting-Machines than the Thunder Child and her contemporaries were.

Physics doesn't always favor the technologically-advanced, either. Energy beams like the Heat-Ray have a major weakness against projectile-firing weapons of older type: they can only fire straight ahead. Indirect fire is impossible to them; a beam of light will only bend if it is near a black hole, and if the Martians wind up near one of THOSE, human weapons will be the least of their worries. Mortars, heavy artillery and howitzers, naval gunfire, and even (against personnel caught outside of their machines) bows, javelins, and slings can all be used to lob lethal fire at unseen targets.

Finally, if the Martians hang around near coastal regions or near large rivers, submarines could give them fits. The subs could sneak in underwater, possibly at night, surface, and feed the Martians a few shells from their deck guns before they even know they're around, then submerge and sneak away when the alarm is sounded.

Well, the main thing that I'd see holding off a total massacre by howitzer would be the Martians using the Heat Ray to shoot down shells in mid-air. (An application of Lasers that is coming into play in modern times) Though the modern method probably requires computer-assited aiming and radar to be effective, the Heat Ray has been seen to cover a wide, sweeping area rather than a single focused point, and the Martian uber-brains might have the reaction times needed to respond to the sound of far off guns. Far from perfect, but it would help restore some Balance in the field.

For one thing, the FIghting machine itself has to rethink how it operates. Towering over the battlefield was fine in 1905, but on a WW1 no-man's-land even poking your head over the side of the ditch is suicide. That grand titan of Steel will be tagged by every gun for miles and soon be a smoking pile of recycling. The machines have to get down low and crawl in the mud, using its armour to shrug off machine guns, rifles, and grenades while it gets into smashing/burning range.

If the Fighting machines are airtight, then the Martians have as little to fear of Gas the the human do, and if they manage to dig into somewhere with the proper materials I'm sure they're skilled enough chemists to whip up a decent explosive that could then be launched via the artilery used to deploy the black smoke.

Overall, I think that WWI technology would do to the Martians exactly what it did to Man - Force a bloody stalemate where no one can pull off any apreciable offensive without simply tossing wave after wave of men at the enemy until they drown in the blood of your dead. (Also known as the Branigan attack. )

I actualy started to write the into to a Fanfic based arround his premise a few months back. It would be in two parts, starting off with a story of human empires scrambling to seize control of what the Martians left behind and figure it out before their rivals do. It then ends when the Martians re-invade an Earth on the verge of global War, leading into Part two wherein the Martians manage to secure some remote location for their own uses and now rush to bring the full wrath of their science to bear against humanity while we try to force aside our differences long enough to kick them out.

What you have to remember Yuri, is that Wells created the Martian's based on the technology of his own time. He made them more advanced than us, so that they could beat us if it wasn't for an unforeseen act of fate.
So if Wells was to write a sequal, then if it was in World War 1 as you suggest than Wells would no doubt suibtably advance the Martians technology to more than deal with that of our own.
The fact is, the story is complete in the origional text. There is nothing new you can add to the story other than have bigger battles and gruesome vivisections. It is great to try and imagine a second war. But if they came back and no longer were they prone to our bacteria, then they would win. Because that's Wells' Martians. They are better than us and, a few mistakes aside, superior conquerers.

I did say "The full wrath of their science," didn't I? The main factor limiting the Martian's ability to fight is, in my opinion, their poverty. They don't have much on Mars with thich to launch the initial attack, but once they've got the raw materials needed to set up some of their flashier toys, the seeming parity between WWI Terran and 1906 Martian armies is shatered. With the second coming and the overtaking of Earth's biological defences, we end up with the good 'ol Artyman's "Brave New World" of Martian supremacy. The end is inevitable, it's the getting there that's fun.

What I'm saying is that, when comparing the Matian forces of the first novel (Set C.1906 the last time I ever asked about it) to the Human armies of the first world War, it becomes a rather pro-human massacre (as layed out rather nicely in the first post.) As long as we're going with a continuation of the novel's plot, the Earth already knows what's coming and you can bet the whole lot of us will be mobilizing the second someone sees a strange flash on the surface of Mars.Once we can track down the hostile landing sites, long-range artilery spam and machine guns mean that we end up with a gooey pile of dead Martian and a lot of ruined Fighting machines. But, once the Martians get themselves settled in (As they'd have a chance to do in my fanfic) they can bring out the stuff they couldn't afford to send with them in the cylinder, and things go Martian sooner than you can spot a problem with Timbo's movie. We get a proud moment of ass-kicking glory, followed by the brutal shredding of all hope.

Wells seems to indicate that all human attempts to duplicate the Martian technology, particularly the Heat-Ray, ended disastrously, so I assumed we wouldn't have any copies of their weapons for the second go-round. (By the way, was anyone else as disappointed as I was when the upcoming novel "Mega War of the Worlds", which postulated a rematch 100 years later with humans manning Fighting Machines, had publication cancelled just as it was about to come out?) Oh, and I assumed that for the second invasion, the Martians would face the human technology used in the First World War.

If Mars was short on resources when preparing for the first invasion, then think how short they are now. Could they get the resources they need on Venus after landing there? Perhaps, assuming that 1) the invasion of Venus was successful, and 2) Venus actually HAS raw materials of the sort the Martians need. (For instance, if we took over a planet with no fissionable materials, we couldn't use its resources to build a nuclear arsenal.) Also, if they could conquer Venus, maybe they wouldn't NEED to attack the Earth again, having all the space and resources they need.

Might the Martians attack anyway, just for revenge? Possible, but we know absolutely nothing about their psychology. Maybe vengeance is an unknown concept to them. And if they DO get emotional, maybe the loss of their entire terrestrial invasion force was such a shock that it permanently turned them off other attempts, just as Rome never attempted to conquer the German wilderness again after Varus' army was slaughtered. (Can't you just imagine the ruler of Mars wringing his tentacles and crying "Zzist! Zzist! Give me back my legions!"?)

If the Martians actually make a second attempt, it all depends on balancing their military improvements vs ours. And here's something else to consider: If they're fortified against ordinary terrestrial germs, human science is just about at the point where our scientists could breed new species of disease bacteria to get around the Martian defenses, assuming they could get Martian blood and possibly prisoners to experiment on. It wouldn't take much space, either; terrorism experts stress how little space a small-scale biotech warfare lab needs. So even if the Martians DO achieve a total conquest, it's entirely possible for human scientists to arm us for a comeback in underground labs of the sort the Artilleryman was hinting at.

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